


This I Understand

by InkedConstellations



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Books, Existential Crisis, Gen, Lists, Rants, Sanity Is Important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 15:04:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7057336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkedConstellations/pseuds/InkedConstellations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lavi organizes things in his head by using lists. With so much information, it's the only way to keep sane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This I Understand

Lavi keeps lists in his mind. It’s the only way to organize everything, and keep him sane while remembering it all. He keeps the important things, of course, historical events and opinions that will, as Bookman puts it, “Shape the future”. It is his role as an observer to not take sides, and simply record information. He is a walking scroll, where every word scratched across his palm in slanted handwriting becomes embedded in his skin, in his mind. Lavi never forgets anything, and sometimes it’s almost too much. So he doesn’t only keep the important things. The redhead clutters his memory with funny moments and good puns, fighting techniques and ways to tease Yuu and amuse himself. Lists of things like

**Why Lenalee Lee is Attractive:**

Her smile

Her clothing choices

No one else can handle Komui

The way she helps people

She doesn’t care that he has only one eye and cannot ever truly be on her side during this war

Her heart

She takes no nonsense even though she’s kind and her laugh is the brightest thing Lavi has ever heard

She’s actually super badass

Etc.

 

Followed immediately after by

**Why Lenalee Lee is not Attractive:**

Komui Lee

 

Sometimes the lists are short, like the list of

**Things That Make Kanda Yuu Smile:**

Fighting

Soba

Mugen

 

Others are very long, too long to go into without spending hours trapped in his room at the order, replaying his memory like a tape recorder. It’s how he keeps his head together. Every library has an organizational system, and even though Bookman has been trying to school Lavi into something with more sense, like an alphabetical or chronological order, the one-eyed man, who is really only a little more than a boy, they are all still children, fighting this war, prefers his lists. Lists are orderly. They can be easily added to or taken away from. Sometimes Lavi makes lists and then hides them, deep inside his mind, lists of **Things I Would Rather Forget** or **Things I Wish Had Never Happened** , but he is a Bookman-in-training, and therefore not allowed to have these opinions. He is not allowed to have any opinions at all, and sometimes when he is staring at his Innocence made hammer after a long period of peace or an even longer battle, Lavi wonders why have Bookmen at all if they aren’t allowed to do anything with the history they collect. What is the point of telling stories if they cannot influence the ending? He adds these things to a new list, one that only started when he joined the Black Order, and started fighting for his life. He counts them off, sometimes, before he goes to sleep, and has considered building a mind palace just so he could store everything. He is not allowed to choose sides, but he is here for now, watching, and Lavi remembers how he used to be so curious about everything. He is no longer curious, and every night when he recites, ‘for recording purposes’, the list grows longer.

 

**The Things Lavi no Longer Wishes to Understand**

Why humans fight the Millenium Earl

Why the Millenium Earl makes akuma

The exorcists are afraid of the Order, or hate it

The Order has done terrible things to them. To all of them.

There is no peace, even if people believe in it

Exorcists can betray their Innocence

Innocence can betray their Excorcist

Akuma can betray the Earl

Noah are humans that just want the world to burn

Lavi has friends

The feeling of not wanting someone to die

The feeling of wanting to live

Lavi has a best friend

His best friend is a Noah

His best friend is dying

The people at the Order are funny, and smart, and claim each other as family, and cannot win

The Millenium Earl is not as inhuman as everyone thought, and the Noah will never stop fighting

Lavi will never be part of the Order’s family

Lavi is not allowed to grow attached to these people, even as they grow attached to them

He will betray the Order, if he has to.

It should not feel like a betrayal, because he has forgotten that he is not allowed to pick sides

This name is becoming permanent, like a piece of himself, even though he has never had a name before

Being ‘Lavi’ is so much more important than being any of the 48 that came before

 

The way it feels to win against an impossible enemy

The way it feels to laugh with someone

The way it feels to no longer be alone inside his head

The way it feels to watch your family die

The way it feels to watch people’s souls be twisted into monsters

The way it feels to watch Exorcist be persecuted for things that aren’t his fault it isn’t his fault but there is nothing Lavi can do

The way it feels to do nothing but watch

How to feel

 

The importance of Neutrality in a war where everything is being lost

 

This war will never end.

At least, not until everyone fighting it has died.

  
Lavi no longer wishes to understand. But he is the next Bookman. And he must remember everything. He must watch, and record, and make lists, and understand, so that the people that follow these bright souls he cares far too much about will also understand. So he keeps his list, and quietly, where Bookman cannot hear him, **Wishes for the Future**.


End file.
